About the Artist
Lauren Lee McCarthy is an LA-based artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. She is the creator of p5.js, and Co-Director of the Processing Foundation. Lauren's work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as The Barbican Centre, Ars Electronica, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der elektronischen Künste, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, Science Gallery Dublin, Seoul Museum of Art. She has received numerous honors including a Creative Capital Award, Ars Electronica Golden Nica, Sundance Fellowship, Eyebeam Fellowship, and grants from the Knight Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Rhizome. Lauren is an Associate Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts.
Other Work
Social Turker
Performance
2013
In 2013, I went on twenty dates with people I met on an online dating site called OkCupid. I used my phone to stream these dates to the Internet. I paid remote workers on a site called Amazon Mechanical Turk to watch, interpret what was happening, and direct me what to do or say next. These directions were communicated to me via text message and I had to perform them immediately.
What if we could receive real-time feedback on our social interactions? Would third party monitors be better suited to interpret and make decisions for the parties involved? Could this make us more aware in our relationships, shift us out of normal patterns, and open us to unexpected possibilities?
https://lauren-mccarthy.com/Social-Turkers
